Venison Rydberg

Biff Rydberg caught my attention as I was thumbing my way through a Swedish butchery book. Even though there was no photo and all the text was in Swedish there was something interesting about it. From my basic grasp of Swedish I understood it to be a more grown up version of Pytt i Panna – which is minced beef mixed with cubes of sautéed potatoes that is to Sweden what chilli con carne is to Texans.

Intrigued, I dipped into Marcus Samuelson’s Aquavit book and discovered that Biff Rydberg is indeed a Swedish classic. Apparently it was invented in a hotel in Stockholm – much like the Wallenberger. It’s a very simple dish of flash fried cubes of beef fillet accompanied by squares of fried potatoes, onions and an egg yolk. Super straightforward. High quality food, simply cooked. It could barely be more Scandinavian. Check out Nordic Nibbler's stunning blog post about this wonderful Scandi dish.

My first attempt at Biff Rydberg actually featured elk, rather than beef, supplied by a fabulous Swedish intern whose brother was a keen huntsman. I cubed the lean elk and served it with diced sautéed potatoes and an egg yolk. It was a big success but I forgot to photograph it and felt as though the meal had slipped away. At the time I remember thinking that it would have been even better with some more interesting root vegetables and some tarragon to make the egg yolk form a sort of bernaisey sauce as it mixes with the warm meat and hot potatoes.

When I moved back to London I planted a few Jerusalem artichokes in the spring along with some golden and pink stripy beetroot. All summer I wished them along and marveled as the artichokes grew up into the stratosphere. And cursed as the beetroot seemed to laugh at me as they tip-toed their way towards adulthood. They were destined for my alternative take on Biff Rydberg – along with some wild mushrooms, the tops from my beetroot and crucially, some venison.

The venison was wild and I didn’t know what cut it came from. So rather than flash frying it – it seemed more sensible to sear it and then let it braise gently with some rehydrated wild mushrooms, juniper and red wine.

And rather than using boring old potatoes, I gave the starches an upgrade with c combination of cubed celeriac, beetroot and artichokes which balanced the metallic savouriness of the game with some earthy sweetness.

It’s a lot of effort. But as the egg yolk mingles with the gamey meat and sweet, earthy vegetables you’ll hopefully agree it’s worth it. It was so satisfying to put my artichokes and beetroot to good use.

Ingredients

For the braised venison

500g of cubed wild venison

300ml of red wine

Handful of juniper berries

Handful of dried mushrooms – rehydrated in 500ml of hot water

3 sliced onions

1 minced clove of garlic

Dried tarragon

Dusting of plain flour

Salt and pepper

Vegetables

4 beetroot

½ celeriac

4 Jerusalem artichokes

Beetroot tops

Dressing

Fresh tarragon

2 egg yolks

1 lemon

Method

This isn’t a hard dish to cook. The only thing that is tricky is juggling lots of different aspects so that they are all ready at the same time. You need to do the 3 different tasks at the same time.

Dust the venison in flour and season with salt and pepper. Brown the meat in a pan. Remove from the pan. Then sauté the onions. Then deglaze the pan with red win and add the venison and juniper berries having given then a gentle bruising first. Chuck in some dried tarragon and the rehydrated wild mushrooms along with enough liquor to cover the meat. Cook in a low oven until the venison is soft. Set aside and get cracking with the other parts.

Bake the beetroot whole. When they are cooked peel off the skin and then slice into cubes and keep warm. Mine were so small there was no need to cut them.

Cut the celeriac into 2 cm and the Jerusalem arichokes into 4 cm chunks and then parboil in salted water until they are almost tender. Then drain, dry, season and roast in a hot oven for 20 minutes or so until golden.

Steam the beetroot tops (or spinach if using) just before serving.

Separate the venison, mushrooms and onions from the liquor and reduce this to a sticky, syrupy sauce.

Arrange the venison in the centre of the plate with an egg yolk nestling inside its shell. Then add the cubed root vegetables so that they fan out across the plate.  And fit the beetroot tops in where you find space. Adorn then meat with the mushroomy mixture and the now reduced sauce. Then scatter the fresh tarragon over the whole plate along with as much seasoning as you think is required. And finish with a little spritz of lemon juice to help the egg yolk and tarragon to meld.

Enjoy with a nice glass of red wine.

Kaiserschmarrn

I waited until the final day of our Austrian skiing holiday last February to ask Cowie’s dad if he had any objections to me marrying his younger daughter! It was minus twenty three degrees centigrade and we were sharing a rickety old chair lift somewhere about St. Anton. As the lift reached the top of the mountain I plucked up courage and fortunately David said yes – followed by a comment that will stay with me forever: “As Prince Philip once said – you’ve been practicing long enough”.

Having agreed to keep it a secret until I asked Sarah the following week – we shot off down the mountain in search of our final lunch of the holiday. Feeling giddy and a bit extravagant we finished our meal of spaetzles and schnitzels with an enormous serving of Kaiserschmarrn. It’s a classic Austrian pudding made of fluffy chopped pancakes studded with raisins that is often served with a plum compote. Apparently it was invented for Emperor Franz Joseph and his very hard to please wife who wanted a nice light dessert. It translates as Emperor’s Nonsense which all seems quite appropriate.

With Pancake Day almost upon us and almost a year gone by from when I proposed to Sarah, I thought sharing this Kaiserschmarrn recipe would be rather appropriate. If you felt like taking the nonsense to a new level you could use blackberry or quince jam instead and maybe even add some different nuts. 

Adapted from a BBC recipe

Ingredients

50g butter, softened to butter the pans
175g caster sugar, plus 40g for dusting the pans
4 free-range egg yolks
300g crème fraîche
75ml dark rum
75g plain flour
60g raisins, soaked in rum
8 free-range eggs, whites only
½ tsp cream of tartar
60g icing sugar, for dusting

Method

Butter two ovenproof dishes and then dust with sugar. Cream the egg yolks and 25g sugar with a whisk until smooth. Then beat in the crème fraîche and rum, followed by the flour. Add the rum soaked raisins.

Whisk the egg whites along with the cream of tartare and remaining sugar until you’ve got stiff peaks. 

Then fold the egg whites into the batter and pour into the two pans. Bake for 20 minutes – or until lightly browned and set. Remove from the oven and chop.



Then dust with icing sugar and serve with plum compote and whipped cream.





If you've got any suggestions for recipes for pancake day please let me know. We're more determined than ever to win our annual competition this time round.

Flaming Wild Mushroom Crepes

My Godfather gave us an unbelievably exciting collection of dried wild mushrooms as a very generous engagement present. The sight of jumbo Morels, dried Chanterelles, Porcini and Trompettes de la Mort were too much to cope with, so I decided to give our Flaming Wild Mushroom Pancake recipe another outing, but with turbo charged fungus.

We first created it for our entry into this year’s Pancake Day competition. It came about when we wondered how we could capture the excitement of a flaming Crepe Suzette with my obsession with mushrooms. Initial plans involved truffles and fine cognac, but it got scaled down to a more sensible wild mushroom ragout spooned inside a pancake and then doused in flaming brandy.

Full of confidence and low on voting smarts we came second in February to a Chile Con Carne Crepe, which, it pains me to say it, was a deserving winner. Stung by defeat, we went back to the chopping board and tweaked our recipe to dial up the shroom factor and weave in some complementary flavours into the batter and mushroom ragout.

We decided to add some porcini powder and chives to the batter to make it more savory. And also threw in extra tarragon, thyme and parsley into the ragout to make it more complex. We also decided to use Taleggio rather than Parmesan because it melts better and has a tang that makes the mushrooms stand out more.

Ingredients:

Pancake batter:
Porcini powder (or throw dried mushrooms into the batter and then remove them after you’ve let the batter prove)
Flour
Eggs
Water
Salt
Chopped chives

Mushroom Ragout:

1 onion
3 cloves of finely chopped garlic
600g button mushrooms
3 handfuls of dried wild mushrooms
600ml hot water
Rocket
100ml double cream
Tarragon
Parsley
Taleggio
Salt
Pepper

Method

Start by making the batter. Whisk together the flour, eggs, water and add in the porcini powder or dried mushrooms.

Then chop the chives very finely and add them too. Let the batter prove overnight.

Rehydrate the dried wild mushrooms in boiling water and leave to steep for 30 minutes, or as long as the packet says.

In the meantime, fry an onion in olive oil and butter over a low heat and once softened add in the chopped garlic. Don’t let it brown. Then add the chopped fresh mushrooms and cook until soft and coloured. Add some salt and sauté until the liquid that the mushrooms leach has bubbled away.

Then squeeze the now hydrated, formerly dried, mushrooms into their bowl and add to the pan. Give this some heat to drive off the excess liquid and then, perversely, add in the mushroom stock 200ml at a time. Reduce this down until there it is a bit saucy.

Then add in lots of chopped tarragon, thyme and parsley. Season and then add in 100ml of double cream and continue to reduce until you have a rich mushroomy sludge.

Keep this warm and fry some pancakes using the now proved batter. Once you’ve fried the pancake on the bottom, flip it and spoon some of the mushroom ragout onto half of the pancake.

Add a few rocket leaves, a few slices of taleggio, salt and pepper and fold over.

Pat down with a spatula and douse in brandy over a hot flame. Stand back. 

Serve with a peppery side salad.

Roast Gurnard with sage and squash

When we were in Salcombe a few years ago we went on a memorable fishing trip where I managed to catch nothing but sand eels whilst the rest of the gang reeled in a whole school of mackerel. A friend called Nick, who could catch a sea bass in a 2 inch puddle, even managed to snare a gurnard much to my shame. But then again he is a fish magnet.

In contrast to my sand eels, and the mercury coloured mackerel bullets, the gurnard seemed exotic and of another world. With big eyes and a red mohican it looked worryingly like the three eyed fish that is found in the river near the nuclear power plant in the Simpsons. Ever since this encounter I’ve been keen to cook one.

My chance belated came the other day. I popped into Moxons on my way home, in search of a modest piece of fish. I was thinking of lemon sole, Arctic char or mackerel, but was seduced by the idea of a large gurnard.

When I inquired how to cook it the fishmonger instantly dictated that I roast it with sage and pumpkin. I could have spent ages thinking about what would have worked well. But sometimes a bit of firm direction works wonders. On a hot summer night you’d probably be better with something more lemony and acidic, but if it’s a bit cooler this is a great way to enhance the earthy and mellow nature of gurnard.

Ingredients

1 large gurnard
½ butternut squash
Handful of sage
Spinach leaves
Salt
Pepper
1 lemon
Olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
Butter

Method

Cut the squash into bit sized chunks. Season with salt and pepper and roast in a medium oven along with the garlic cloves and sage leaves.

Make a garlic and sage butter by adding minced garlic with finely chopped sage leaves.

Prepare the gurnard by slashing the skin, seasoning and studding with sage butter.

After 30 minutes when the squash is getting soft, place your gurnard on top of the squash.

Cook for 10 minutes until the fish is just cooked. Remove from the oven and wilt some spinach in a pan.

Serve the gurnard whole, with the squash and spinach on the side. Squeeze some lemon over the fish and spoon whatever juices are left in the pan over the fish.

Mackerel, Beetroot, Lentil and Egg Salad

A few months ago I found myself arriving at a bizarre Parisian hotel in the middle of what seemed like nowhere for a meeting about biscuits. It was midnight. I was shattered. And the Hotel Mama Shelter flummoxed me so much that I landed up going to the loo in the ladies toilets – only to be ticked off by a couple of outraged lesbians.

After failing to find refuge in my concrete bedroom, lit only by and Obelix and evil Elvis masks, I decided to make a late trip to the bar to regain my sanity.

I whiled away an hour watching the “Medi-arty” hop from table to table, sipping, slurping and flirting in equal measure. The highlight was watching, a bombastically trendy Swedish teenager managed to chat up and bed a fawning American model all in the space of 45 minutes.

During lunch the next day we were served one of the best things I’ve eaten this year. It couldn’t have been a lot more simple. It was just a mound of perfectly cooked and seasoned green lentils, dressed with mustard and crème fraiche and topped with a soft boiled egg and a scattering of tarragon. Its simplicity belied its flavour and moreishness.

I’ve since taken this straightforward approach to lentils and cook this dish whenever we need to conjour a quick supper out of thin air. Add some smoked mackerel and beetroot and you’ve got one of the healthiest, easiest and most delicious suppers imaginable. I suspect it would be even better with some horseradish.

Ingredients for two people:

300g green lentils
2 eggs
Handful of chopped tarragon
3 smoked mackerel fillets
2 sliced beetroots
2 spoons of Dijon mustard
2 spoons of crème fraiche
Salt and pepper
Lemon

Method:

Boil the lentils until tender. Drain. And allow to cool slightly. Mix through the mustard, crème fraiche and most of the chopped tarragon. Season with salt and pepper to taste. 

Soft boil or poach your eggs.

Throw on some broken up pieces of smoked mackerel and some slices of beetroot and place the soft cooked egg on top. Sprinkle the remaining tarragon on top. Season the egg, squeeze some lemon over the top and serve immediately. Pierce the egg to release the runny yolk and tuck in.

Brunost and Juniper Venison Shank with Spelt

One of the classic ways of cooking with brunost in Scandinavia is to use it to enrich slow cooked game dishes that have been laced with juniper. I first discovered it in Andreas Viestad’s Scandinavian cookbook, Kitchen of Light. The sweetness and unexpected tang help to lift the sauce away from fuggy earthiness and gives the sometimes thin liquor a glossy glow. It’s the Norwegian equivalent of adding some dark chocolate to a Mexican mole.

I picked up a handsome venison shank from Balham Farmers’ Market that would have been just as happy (and a lot more expensive) had I encountered it in Gothenburg. The meat was as dense as lead and spoke of a life of permanent effort and back-breakingly hard work.

It needed to be cooked as slowly as possible – in a way that could cope with the rich flavour of the meat and the tense meat. So I decided to throw mushrooms, red wine, spelt, juniper and onions at the casserole dish and abandoned it for the afternoon whilst it burbled away in the oven. Whilst June isn’t the normal time of year to be writing about venison shank stews – the weather right now is making me feel a bit like hibernating with a lump of brunost.

Ingredients to serve 2

1 large venison shank or 2 small shanks
100g of pearled spelt
100g of dried mushrooms (preferably porcini or morels)
100g of sliced button mushrooms
30g of brunost
A good handful of juniper berries
2 bay leaves
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
400ml of stock to cover (but top up with water as required)
2 glasses of red wine
Salt and pepper

Rehydrate the dried mushrooms and make sure you keep the liquor.

Method:

Roll the venison shank in seasoned flour and then brown in a hot cast iron casserole dish. Remove and then sweat the onion, button mushrooms and garlic until they have taken on some colour and the mushrooms have shed some of their juice. Then add the spelt, rehydrated mushrooms (and their liquor), the juniper berries, bay leaf and venison shank. Cover with red wine and stock until well covered. Then bring to a simmer.

Once it is bubbling away, pop on the lid and place in the oven to cook for another 2 hours or so at a low heat. You must check on its progress to make sure it doesn’t dry out as the spelt with absorb a surprising amount of liquid. Top up with stock, red wine or water as you wish.



Once the meat is lethargically giving up its grip on the tendons and bones remove from the oven and drain off the liquid. Strain these luscious juices into a pan and reduce to a condensed slick of brown heaven. Check for seasoning and add more juniper berries. Then when it is getting a bit thicker, add the brunost and whisk like a madman. The sauce should thicken and become a bit fudgy. Taste it as you go and don’t over reduce because the sugars may catch. Keep this warm whilst you attend to your cauliflower cheese.



Strip the tender venison meat from the bone and assemble with the spelt and mushroom stew, topped with the glossy brunost and juniper sauce, alongside the brunost cauliflower cheese and some wilted spinach.

Like still waters, this dish runs deep. The combination of sweet and sour brunost with bitter juniper mixed with the feral depth of the mushrooms and venison make this a dish that a Viking, returning from a day of pillaging, would be very happy to come home to.